Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant south, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop.
-- Able Meeropol (Lewis Allan)314
The NAACP had pushed for the reconsideration of the Costigan-Wagner Bill with the publication of the Rubin Stacy pamphlet, staged a successful campaign selling buttons and bumper stickers, and continued publishing of The Crisis and supplements to it concerning anti- lynching efforts.315 The continued lobbying pressure applied by the NAACP, the CP, and others ensured that lynching would remain in the public eye. The continued push for federal legislation would call for essentially the same measures pushed for in the Costigan-Wagner Bill, even as the names attached to the bill would change as a matter of necessity. After declining health forced William Costigan from the Senate, the NAACP would secure new sponsorship for anti-lynching bills from both Frederick Van Nuys of Indiana and Joseph Gavagan of New York. The NAACP still faced resistance to anti-lynching legislation in Congress, and faced more problems from within the anti-lynching movement. The division between the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL) and the NAACP continued to be a major problem.
314
Lewis Allan, "Strange Fruit." New York, NY: Edward Marks Music Corporation. (1940).
315
Robert Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909-1950. Philadelphia, PA. (1980). pp. 139-165.
Members of the ASWPL, including its leader, Jessie Daniel Ames, chafed at the notion of federal intervention into race matters in the South, and continued to aid the chief opponent to anti-
lynching legislation in the House of Representatives, Hatton Sumners of Texas, in his efforts to stifle federal legislation on the matter.316 Still, the NAACP would secure enough signatures to release the bill from the Judiciary Committee of which Sumners was the head. In the Senate federal anti-lynching legislation would face filibustering and take a backseat to other items on the legislative agenda. Senator James F. Byrnes of South Carolina in 1938 wondered aloud during a filibuster if the passage of anti-lynching legislation would lead to forced integration of schools and businesses and the supervision of elections.317 During the same filibuster Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi would revert to the tired refrains concerning miscegenation and rape.318 Additional complications arose from Franklin Roosevelt's court packing scheme, the death of Majority Leader Joseph Robinson, and, oddly, a competing anti-lynching bill with very little merit in the eyes of the NAACP put forth by the only black member of the House, Arthur Mitchell of Illinois.319 The obstacles would continue to mount as the world moved closer and closer to World War II, but the debates that continued to take place in Congress and other public forums would continue to develop arguments against lynching. These arguments and discussions would continue to use images of lynching in order to raise public consciousness and pieces of evidence in the case for anti-lynching legislation.
During this period debates in the Senate would include actual lynching photographs as pieces of evidence in favor of passing federal legislation regarding lynching. This was a tactic
316 Zangrando, p. 143. 317 Zangrando, p. 150. 318 Zangrando, p. 150. 319 Zangrando, pp. 141- 145.
that had heretofore been left out of the actual Congressional debates. Much to the chagrin of opponents to the bill, Senator Bennett Champ Clark showed graphic photographs from a recent lynching in Duck Hill, Mississippi where the victims had been murdered with acetylene torches. The pictures were placed on the Senate bulletin board and were accompanied by the caption, "There have been No Arrests, No Indictments, and No Convictions of Any One of the Lynchers. This was NOT a rape case."320 (Emphasis in the original in all quotations) The argument would carry into the next Congressional session without having been resolved, and upon its resumption Senator Tom Connally of Texas would question who had the gall to show lynching photographs on the Senate floor. Clark would take responsibility and declare that his placard had served its purpose, if Connally was so agitated.321 Connally would breach rules of Senate decorum with his retorts to Clark, and would continue by saying that the Senate should not be, "made a sewer for the vaporings (sic) of the Senator from Missouri."322 The condemnation of the images of Clark given by Connally suggested that there was something lurid or objectionable about the images, which is significant. Connally protested legislation to make lynching a federal crime, but he still objected to the content of lynching photographs. Even amongst opponents to legislation such as Connally characterizations of these photographs were disapproving, and they certainly were not represented as a celebration of white supremacy. In the words of Jacqueline Goldsby they were being articulated as a kind of "folk pornography."323 The way in which lynching and lynching photographs were being described was changing, even if legislation would never pass. The six week filibuster would signal the beginning of the end of the push for federal anti-lynching
320 Zangrando, p. 146. 321 Zangrando, p. 147. 322 Zangrando, p.148. 323
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Amers and the Women's Campaign Against Lynching. New York: Columbia University Press. (1993). p. xx.; Jacqueline Goldsby. A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. (2006). p. 90.
legislation. While there would be other attempts to pass anti-lynching legislation, the close of these debates in the late 1930's is generally considered to be the end of the last big push for federal legislation of this kind.324
The stalled attempts and eventual inability to win the passage of federal anti-lynching legislation had many consequences that ought to be considered when assessing the rhetoric of the anti-lynching movement. When one considers the Art Commentary on Lynching, the Rubin Stacy pamphlet, and the myriad other publications and pieces of propaganda, one might conclude that the inability to secure federal legislation marked a "failure" in the anti-lynching movement, and more specifically a "failure" on the part of these examples of rhetoric to be persuasive. However, one must weigh this failure against the victory of raised social consciousness regarding lynching and racial injustice. The late 1930's represented a point in time where public opinion would rally around the push for a federal anti-lynching bill. Two Gallup Polls taken in January and
November of 1937 revealed that a majority of people in both surveys, even in the South, responded yes to the question, "should Congress enact a law which would make lynching a federal crime?"325 Also, the practice of lynching declined steadily in the late 1930's with number of lynchings dropping from 20 in 1935 to fewer than 10 in each of the next five years.326 Robert Zangrando writes of the period from 1936-1940 and the NAACP efforts positing, "Over four years of intensive efforts had forced the American people to confront the most brutal aspects of racism. The lesson, however painful to acknowledge and absorb, helped in significant ways to prepare the national conscience for reforms that would follow in the next quarter century."327
324 Zangrando, pp. 139-165. 325 Zangrando, p. 148. 326 Zangrando, p. 7. 327 Zangrando, p. 153.
This preparation of the national conscience carried out through the anti-lynching campaign identified by Zangrando, I have argued, was heavily reliant on the use of images. The way that these images circulated into the public conscience through the direct efforts to lobby and argue for federal anti-lynching legislation has been considered at some length in the examination of both the Art Commentary on Lynching and the Rubin Stacy pamphlet.
There is another element of lynching protest, though, that has been left unexamined. This is the movement of anti-lynching arguments and imagery into the realm of popular culture. More specifically, how did the lessons of the push for federal anti-lynching legislation enter the
popular culture, even as attempts to pass legislation dwindled in number and scope? The changes in popular representations of lynching give us some idea. As noted above, the steady decline through the end of the decade and the Gallup Polls indicate that the arguments were gaining some traction with the American people, even if their representatives in Congress were unwilling or unable to force a fair hearing for anti-lynching legislation through parliamentary
procedures.328 Films such as Fritz Lange's Fury and the work of Oscar Micheaux had begun to carry the work of discussing lynching outside the realm of Congressional debates and
publications of overtly political organizations such as The Crisis and The New Masses.329 Arguably the most important piece of anti-lynching protest created in the milieu of popular culture was a poem, later set to music, which would invoke the scene of a lynching. The song, "Strange Fruit" has been called the most important protest song of the last century by Time
magazine,330 and it was also recognized as the first popular song recorded (1939) in the service
328 Zangrando, pp. 163-164. 329 Wood, pp. 223-260. 330 Time Magazine. 12/31/1999.
of the anti-lynching movement according to the Atlanta Daily World. 331 The song has been performed and recorded by many different artists,332 suggesting that the visual provocations of the song have been kept salient over time by its critique of the mythologies underpinning the act of lynching and the circulation and re-circulation of lynching photographs.
As noted previously, Lester Olson has argued that the circulation and re-circulation of an image and the discursive material that accompanies it can lead to a better understanding of how audiences actively engage and participate in creating meaning and rhetorical agency of an image or derivations of that image.333 Readings and performances of "Strange Fruit" act as another iteration in the rhetorical re-circulation of lynching images. "Strange Fruit" presents a lynching image in the mind's eye of the listeners in such a way that the "audience is not merely a witness to the argument, but a participant in its creation."334 I argue that "Strange Fruit" relies in part on the listeners' previous exposure to photographs, imagery, and written accounts of lynching in order to develop a persuasive appeal that produces a visceral and emotional reaction to the image conjured in the mind of the listeners. So, while there is not an image visually presented or re- circulated in the song, it rhetorically re-circulates imagery of lynching by using provocative descriptions and metaphors in the lyrics to spur the imagination of the listener.
The previous case studies have shown the presentation of images in anti-lynching
arguments as a major rhetorical strategy of protest. In the Art Commentary on Lynching different visual mediums were used to represent lynching in ways that undermined the message originally
331“Billie Holiday Records First Song about Lynching Evils,”
Atlanta Daily World. June 19, 1939.
332
Margolick, Discography Appendix. Shows that the song has been recorded and released by 36 different artists from 1939-2000.
333
Lester Olson. "Pictorial Representations of British-America Resisting Rape: Rhetorical Re-Circulation of a Print Series Portraying the Boston Port Bill of 1774" Rhetoric & Public Affairs. Vol. 12:1. (2009). p.27.
334
Cara Finnegan, "Recognizing Lincoln: Image Vernaculars in Nineteenth Century Visual Culture"
intended in lynching photographs. In the Rubin Stacy pamphlet textual interaction with a specific photograph of a lynching was used to expose and critique the definitions and displays of
citizenship represented in that photograph, and extended that critique into a call for federal anti- lynching legislation. This chapter explores an episode in the rhetorical trajectory of re-
appropriating and repurposing lynching photographs by looking at the way "Strange Fruit" provides an ekphrastic representation of a lynching scene in order to embed the reading of lynching images in an image vernacular of protest. As such, "Strange Fruit" is a rhetorical effect of these previous efforts in the anti-lynching movement that is capitalized upon through carefully orchestrated performances and the circulation of recordings of the song. What I am arguing is that the continued efforts in the vein of the Art Commentary on Lynching, the Rubin Stacy pamphlet, and the vast resources marshaled by the NAACP and other groups in the preceding years provided a means by which the song “Strange Fruit” could use lynching images
enthymematically as the result of continued exposure and contextualization of these images into an image vernacular of protest. Below there is an explanation of the history of the song, followed by a rhetorical analysis of the lyrics, Billie Holiday's performance of it, and concluding remarks that discuss the ways in which the rhetorical re-circulation of images continued through
performances of the song in varied locales, along with the circulation of recordings of the song.
4.1 The Seed and Growth of "Strange Fruit"
The genesis of "Strange Fruit is tied to the efforts of protests organization in the 1930's to secure federal anti-lynching legislation. Abel Meeropol, pen name Lewis Allan, was a politically active Jewish school teacher in New York who composed protest poetry and music. Responding to an account of a lynching, Meeropol penned an angry response to the violence in the form of a poem. When asked about the origins of this poem some years later, Meeropol would say, "Way
back in the early thirties, I saw a photograph of a lynching in a magazine devoted to the exposure and elimination of racial injustice. It was a shocking photograph and it haunted me for several days. As a result, I wrote "Strange Fruit" ... and [later] set it to music."335 This is rhetorically significant because it shows the song as an interpretation of a lynching photograph in the setting of a protest publication lobbying for anti-lynching legislation. Meeropol's exposure to lynching was limited to photographs and accounts in these publications, so his lyrics are a translation of a particular photograph that had been filtered through a publication like The Crisis or The New Masses. The exact photograph that the words translate remains unknown. However, as Nancy Kovaleff Baker notes, "The photograph that inspired the poem is not among Meeropol's papers, but many photographs could have prompted this response."336 As has been argued in the previous chapters, lynching photographs were carefully constructed through the photographic conventions of the white supremacist image vernacular, and as a result the images can be interchangeable to certain degree. The image Meeropol responded to had already been repurposed as an anti- lynching, but importantly these photographs remained virtually unchanged in what they showed to the viewer. The lynching scene was translated into a different way of looking by anti-lynching protest that altered the rhetorical symbolic exchange of what the event and representations of it meant. In this way "Strange Fruit" like the texts and images of the previous chapters conformed to or violated the generic constraints of lynching photography for rhetorical effect.
Originally, the poem was titled "Bitter Fruit," and though accepted in the Communist Party's publication, The New Masses, it did not appear in print there, but would first enter the
335
Nancy Kovaleff Baker, “Abel Meeropol (a.k.a. Lewis Allan): Political Commentator and Social Conscience. American Music. Vol. 20:2. (2002). p. 46.
336
public sphere in print in 1937 in The New York Teacher, a teacher's union publication.337
Lynching was the subject of or a theme in many of Meeropol's works, but "Strange Fruit" was by far the most famous of these pieces. However, it would not gain fame until sometime after its initial publication. Prior to this, the poem was set to music by Meeropol and performed by his wife and a teachers‟ chorus of which he was a part. A fellow member of this chorus and
secretary of the teachers union in New York sent the poem to 96 Senators in support of the Gavagan anti-lynching bill in 1937 that was, "accompanied by a letter urging that the bill be passed so that the treatment of minorities at home would not diminish American influence abroad."338 The poem's early life consisted of this kind of circulation. Once the words were set to music, most of the performances of it were in front of teacher's groups, performances at
Communist Party events, and other functions for left leaning organizations. One such performance was co-produced by Robert Gordon, who was involved in the floor direction of shows at a New York night club called Café Society, whose main draw was an artist named, Billie Holiday. At the request of Gordon and the owner of the club, Barney Josephson, Meeropol came to the club and performed the song for Holiday.339 The accounts of Holiday's initial
response to the song are disputed. However, Holiday first performed the tune in front of an audience in 1939 at Cafe Society in New York and recorded it later that same year on Commodore Records.340 It was here that the song would make the leap from a politically conscious poem set to music into the signature number of one the most popular singers of this era. Note that Holiday's performances of the song and the recordings of it would begin to
337 Baker, p. 47. 338 Baker, p. 54. 339
David Margolick, Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song. New York: The ECCO Press. (2001). p. 27.
340
circulate right as the primary sustained push for anti-lynching legislation was coming to a close. The success of the song, then, can be measured by audience reaction and its continued presence in the social consciousness regarding lynching.
Holiday's performance and recording of the song would provide the song with a larger audience than Meeropol would likely have gathered through his publishing of it and the varied performances in variety shows that Meeropol and his friends performed in that featured it from time to time. Rhetorically, Holiday crafted a relationship to the song that would make her